A Dark Sea
by teabizarre
Summary: Dystopian Sherlock AU. Every few years the New Parliament declares a two-week 'cull': citizens are randomly matched to each other. The first to kill their match survives.


Part One

_cold, dark sea_

_your waves are rocking me_

_I close my eyes and fall asleep_

_all eyes on me_

_your eyes on me_

('Sinking Man', Of Monsters and Men)

i.

John's mobile phone skittered on his bedside table, the PASS message alert tone slow and thorough like a beating heart. It was a sound crafted not just to be heard, but to be _felt_: vibrating in bodily cavities, shuddering breath down your spine. John had seen what an unsettling effect it could have on crowds, when dozens of phones pulsed in unison, like multiple heads of a monster looking up simultaneously. Even though he knew he was alone in his bedsit, he still felt a prickle of unease, being so directly connected to so many strangers.

He hunted for the mobile with a blind hand, accidentally knocked it from the table, swore, and stooped to retrieve it. He squinted at the screen. The top-right corner registered that it was six am, two hours till his alarm was set to go off. The message was marked urgent, but then they all were. After all, it was the Public Alert Security System.

He rolled back into bed as he read it. His initial reaction was shock—it had been years—and then a fizzing combination of fear and excitement he didn't want to examine too deeply or closely, because he suspected it leaned decisively in the one direction it oughn't. He read the message again, more slowly this time. His heart thudded noisily in his chest. It felt like his stomach had sunk through the bed; like he had sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

It had been a decade since the last cull. John had been exempted from that selection because of his age (no one under thirty; no one over sixty), but now, at thirty-eight, he was sure to be partnered. He'd get the message in the next twenty-four hours. It would contain two things: the name and photograph of the person he had to kill, or who would kill him in the end.

John abandoned his mobile and settled back into his bed. His throat felt very dry as he tried to envisage the next two weeks. Culls only ever lasted a fortnight. If, by the end of it, both partners were still alive, the government executed both. Suicide was always an option—in the case of a cull directive, it was even considered noble. John had considered it in his darker moments after he'd come back from the war, but of course there was nothing like a threat to your existence to make you cling to it all the more desperately.

And he wondered, more wistfully than the situation deserved, probably, about his partner. The selection was supposedly completely random. Still, John hoped it would be an even match. Perhaps then it would feel less like murder.

ii.

'You've been selected,' Mycroft said, without preamble. He slid a file—a paper file, so old-fashioned—onto the coffee table at Sherlock's elbow and settled into the chair opposite, leaning his umbrella (wet; he'd come directly from the club, then, where it was raining) against it and undoing the topmost button of his waist coat (lunch meeting, in a private room).

Sherlock danced his fingers over his violin, not playing, just resting the familiar weight of it in his hand, against his neck. He could identify four of the people his older brother had been with from the smells lingering in his pockets and on his fingers and by that slight brush of lipstick on his cheek. Which made this more interesting, considering that at least two of them had the power to remove Mycroft's pesty younger sibling from the cull database.

'Sherlock,' Mycroft threatened, when Sherlock made no response. Sherlock lowered his violin with a sigh. 'We don't have time for your usual dramatics. I've retrieved everything about him that I could find' (the file, Sherlock noted, was rather on the thin side, and looked predictably _official_) 'but as you can see, there isn't much more than what was publicly available anyway.'

'Government?' Sherlock asked, intrigued despite himself. He eased the violin into its case and carried it to the couch.

'Military,' Mycroft said, voice grim.

Sherlock couldn't quite keep the tone of surprise out of his response when he identified the thrumming resistance in Mycroft's posture.

'You're frightened,' he said, eyebrows shooting into his hairline.

Mycroft worked the tip of the umbrella into the carpet, refusing to meet his eyes. 'He isn't your average recruit. He's highly trained—and intelligent. He won't play games with you, Sherlock.' Mycroft's hand stilled on his umbrella to underscore his point. 'There will be no puzzles with this one. As soon as he has identified you, he will come for you directly.'

Sherlock snatched up the file and folded himself into his chair once more. When he'd woken that morning, the day had not been much more promising than the dreary, overcast sky, but things were looking up.

'He can't be all that dangerous.' Sherlock smirked, skimming the file now open on his lap. _Watson, John Hamish_ headed the first page; a crisp transcription of two decades of military service with many distinctions followed. 'If he wasn't even able to dodge a bullet.'

'The only reason he was wounded, _brother dear_, is because he insisted on stabilising an injured comrade. Who lived, by the by.' Mycroft wetted his lips. 'He's brave, this one.'

'Bravery is by far the kindest word for stupidity, don't you think?' Sherlock parroted Mycroft's words back at him.

'Even imbeciles can be dangerous. Sherlock.' Mycroft's mouth scrabbled for the right words. Sherlock had never seen him this nervous before. His hands stilled on John Watson's file as he watched Mycroft try to recollect himself. 'My attempts to remove your name from the registry have failed. This headstart is as much as I can give you. I need you to understand that it might not be enough.'

Sherlock arched an eyebrow.

'_Please_. Do not underestimate Dr John Watson.'

'On the contrary.' Sherlock gave his brother a beautific smile. 'I really hope I don't.'

iii.

John limped through the park, pace unhurried for once by impatient business people with bluetooth headsets or parents trailing lines of demanding children like ducklings in their wake. The city was subdued—the surprised lull after a loud noise. Into the silence drummed bureaucrats and soldiers and politicians and activists. Every cull brought the country to the precipice of revolution; every cull ground dissenters beneath its boot.

John was not surprised by the largely deserted streets. It was a time of war, after all, and most people sought out the comfort and familiarity of home and family. Thousands would absentee themselves from work; shops would close after panicked crowds bought the shelves bare, stocking up on necessities. After a few days the only places left open would be of the more nefarious sort: gun shops, clubs. Crime would spike before being cut off at its knees by brute force. If he survived, it was likely John would be called in at some point to help empty out the overrun morgues, cataloguing the various desperate methods of assassination meticulously for databases few would ever consult before sending the bodies off for cremation.

It shouldn't seem so _normal_, John reflected, all paperwork and crowd control, but then he supposed that was rather the point.

The text came through as he paused at an intersection, waiting for the light to turn green. The alert, that strange, empty half-throb, immediately clawed its way into his nervous system, trying to deaden the calm and fingering his brain stem with raw, instinctual panic, but John throttled it down with two deep breaths and patted his pockets for his phone.

Several things happened at once.

-Someone joined him at the intersection in a determined flurry of coat, halting behind him and to his right, and John just caught the slither of warning at the back of his mind (that gut-deep recognition of danger) before

-A bike messenger whirring up behind them, keen to take advantage of some minuscule gap in traffic, missed one of her pedals and clipped into the tall man the same moment

-A taxi slashed past, clearly enjoying the lack of usual mid-day traffic congestion.

It was a hairsbreadth, if that. The stranger hung at an awkward angle, John's hands fisted in his overcoat. The man was propped up on a single knee and exhaled loudly as the taxi's horn blared a second too late and the driver sped off without stopping. The bike messenger paused on the opposite curb, but on seeing John's expression she dropped away too, with a regretful jerk of her hand.

'Bloody fuck,' John said, more for his benefit than anyone else's. 'Are you all right?'

The man was cerebral-looking: tall, thin, with curly dark hair and glacial eyes. He sprung onto his feet almost immediately, stepping away from John, hands balling in his jacket pockets. John let him go, surprised by his quick recovery. Not just an average citizen, he'd bet anything.

'I asked-' John began again, when his question went unanswered.

'Yes, yes, fine!' the man snapped irritably, glaring at John from behind austere cheekbones. 'Why did you do that?' he demanded, like all the world, John included, owed him immediate answers.

'I try not to let people get run over if I can help it,' John said, countering the man's tone with acidic dryness.

The man stared. 'You don't know,' he surmised at last. He looked suddenly uncomfortable.

'Know what?' asked John, nonplussed and wondering if the guy was crazy.

He sneered. One hand appeared from his pocket, holding something John identified as-

'Hey, that's my phone!'

Wordlessly the man handed it back to him. As John took it he noticed that the stranger had the newest PASS text open. _Holmes, Sherlock Sherrinford_, it read. Beneath it was a headshot, dated a month before, of the man now standing in front of him.

John regarded his mobile warily for a few moments before pocketing it.

'What's in your other pocket?' he asked Sherlock calmly.

The look of surprise on Sherlock's face quickly changed into something unnervingly like delight. He opened the palm of his gloved left hand. It was a syringe.

'And what's in that?'

'Ketamine,' Sherlock admitted readily.

'Hmm, of course. Wouldn't want to do it out here.' John's tone was frosty.

'It would have been quick, I assure you.' Sherlock recapped the hypodermic and tucked it into the breast pocket of his coat.

'So, what? You render me unconscious, flag down a cab, drag me back to your lair and murder me in my sleep?' John asked.

Sherlock frowned. 'That was the gist of it.'

John snorted derisively.

'And what was _your_ plan? Never mind,' Sherlock amended, scoffing, '_obvious_. You're carrying a gun. Military-issued Browning, tucked into the waistband of your jeans. You've been waiting for the text; you figured one quick web search and a shot to the face-'

'Heart,' John interrupted him. 'I wouldn't have shot you in the face.'

'Oh, that's _very_ comforting!'

'No more comforting than not even having an honest chance at fighting back!' John spat.

Sherlock stared at him, momentary surprise dissolving into a cool mask. Several seconds passed. John noticed suddenly that he was no longer holding his cane, nor did his leg hurt like the devil had chewed on the tendons.

'Here,' Sherlock said, and when John looked back at him he held John's cane out to him.

'Your limp's psychosomatic,' he noted, as John hurried to batten down his surprise into something more neutral. 'If nothing else, this cull should straighten it out.'

'Right,' John said, and cleared his throat.

'Well then.' Sherlock had his hands clasped behind his back. 'Until next time?'

John thrust out a hand. After a few beats, Sherlock reached out and grasped it. His grip was firm. They shook twice.

'Till next time,' John agreed.


End file.
